The Storylines:
And just like that, the four main contenders of Season 22 have entered the ring. I honestly cannot recall the last time — if ever — that LRF has had a tight four-horse race. This season has a clear set of four favorites, as exemplified by their sweep of the Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Ensemble Cast categories. In total, these films nabbed an astounding 2/3 of all nominations at this ceremony (36 of 56). Perhaps my colleague Jeff Stockton will have a better handle on if there is any one contender who stands a better chance than the others at the moment but I honestly cannot tell myself. This feels like it could be anyone’s ballgame. Let’s break down our four main prizefighters, shall we?
We will start with the most recent release of the bunch, Black Hole from the season’s final round. When Death Dream was released in Season 6, it was met with widespread acclaim, won five Golden Reel Awards, and has since been considered one of LRF’s finest films. Naturally, a lot of eyes were then on Black Hole as it re-teamed the writer-director duo of John Malone and David Robert Mitchell. While there are similarities between the two films (namely the claustrophobic feel of a doomed small town), Black Hole is decidedly its own thing and has been labeled by some as one of the strangest stories to be adapted at LRF in recent years.
Will Black Hole benefit from being the freshest in voters’ minds? Not far behind we have Caesar Part II, which was a big release for the season’s penultimate round. The whole gang is back together for this film, including the GRA winners for Best Original Story, Best Director, and Best Actor. I wrote in my mid-season post how unprecedented this situation is — a sequel of this sort being nominated after having big success before. Now that the nominations have come in, those major questions still linger. Will voters be willing to reward the likes of DiCaprio and Nolan again after having won int he same franchise?
Hailing from Round 5, Quentin Tarantino’s Broadway ended up with eight nominations. This is perhaps less than some were expecting but a great number nonetheless. Its strengths are its ensemble cast, a category in which it may be the front-runner, and Tarantino in the director’s chair. This has been his most well-received film since coming to LRF and it is not particularly close so there is something exciting about a legendary director feeling as if he has fully arrived.
And in the final corner, Open Hearts — the earliest season release of the bunch. While it may be further back than the others, it has just as much prestige behind it as rest. Namely, it is the only film of the four to land nominations in all four acting categories. Surely this will draw comparisons to season 20’s Wish You Were Here, a Roy Horne film that achieved a similar feat. That film failed to win Best Picture, though, and a Horne film has not won that award since Season 16 with Excalibur (arguably the start of this prestigious run he has been on). Can Open Hearts bring Horne his second Best Picture trophy?
The Surprises & Snubs:
Snub: The Only Good Indians & Hair - Alongside Audible, these films are probably the biggest casualties of the top four’s stranglehold on most categories. But at least that film landed a Best Actor nomination for Mahershala Ali. In any other season, I would imagine these two films would land at least some nominations but this season they never heard their names uttered once on nominations morning.
Surprise: Odysseus - Part Two - I actually privately thought this film would be a one-nomination film but I did not think that one nomination would be Riley Keough. That makes it back-to-back years for Michael Fassbender missing out on a Best Actor nomination for his titular performance.
Snub: OZ Soundtrack - This film was probably never going to be a major awards player but it was a respectable debut for writer Jack brown and I loved its inclusion of an industrial rock soundtrack, helping further differentiate it from every other interpretation of L. Frank Baum’s lore. But it did have stiff competition - Season 22 had the most amount of soundtracks as any season in LRF history (13).
Surprise: Toby Wallace - Of all the acting nominations for the big four films, this was probably the most unexpected. However, that is not to say it is undeserved as Wallace delivers perhaps the most memorable performance in the movie.
Snub: Thomasin McKenzie - The Black Hole team can’t be too upset about a snub given the amount of nominations it got. But it was a bit surprising to see Tye Sheridan land a Best Actor nomination but no McKenzie in Best Actress.
Previous Winners:
Sydney Sweeney - If it was any question before, Sweeney is now firmly one of the top young stars at LRF. Back in Season 19, she landed the rare duo of Best Actress and Best Villain for her memorable turn in Poison Ivy. She once again finds herself with multiple nominations this season, as she is nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.
Christopher Nolan - Can the A-list director keep his streak alive? Three times nominated for Best Director, three Best Director trophies. He previously won for The Prisoner, Caesar, and Risico most recently.
Leonardo DiCaprio - Speaking of streaks, Leo memorably won Best Actor for his first three performances at LRF. The streak was broken when he lost in Season 20 but he returns here with a role that he previously won for back in Season 18.
Margot Robbie - DiCaprio’s second win was for Season 9’s Calamity, which also had a Best Supporting Actress-winning performance from his Wolf of Wall Street co-star Margot Robbie. She has yet to win Best Actress, however, after previously been nominated three times.
Elizabeth Olsen - The Open Hearts star has been nominated for a total of 9 GRAs over the course of her LRF career, which began in Season 3 with a collaboration between her and Nolan — making the 22nd Annual GRAs a Prisoner reunion, of sorts. She previously won Best Actress in season 16 for Coma.
Previous Nominees:
David Robert Mitchell - Although Death Dream saw big success at the 6th Annual GRAs, Mitchell lost out on Best Director to Steven Soderbergh.
Mahershala Ali - Audible is Ali’s 12th film for the studio and his first Best Actor nomination. He was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Season 15 for The Nickel Boys.
Tye Sheridan - While this is Sheridan’s first nomination in the main Best Actor category, he was actually nominated for Best Supporting Actor in Season 6 with Antonio Campos’s Deprogramming.
Riley Keough - The Best Supporting Actress nominee was previously nominated for Best Actress for her turn as Courtney Love in Kurt & Courtney: All Apologies.
Ben Collins - I just wanted to use this spot to note that The Betrothed marks the first time Ben Collins has been nominated for an adaptation, although he has been nominated for multiple original stories in the past.
The Newcomers:
Quentin Tarantino - Perhaps the biggest new name at this ceremony. This is Tarantino’s fourth film for the studio but first one to earn GRA recognition. Hopefully this is not the last we see of Quentin at the studio.
Best Supporting Actor - All four nominees in this category are first-timers. It is not for lack of appearances. Between Sandler, Teller, and Murphy, the trio of actors have appeared in 16 films at LRF before their nominations this season.
Katherine Langford - While the other three Best Actress nominees have all won the award, Langford is the one debutant. She has been nominated three times for her parts in ensembles and as a starring couple.
Danny Boyle - Boyle was arguably a snub for his direction of Antarctica back in Season 20 and gets his first Best Director nomination here.
Laura Dern & Rebecca Hall - Both of these Best Supporting Actress nominees received their first individual acting nominations after each having been nominated as parts of ensembles (Blind Faith and Mass Effect 3 - Part 2, respectively).
Alexander Skarsgard - Skarsgard has been around the studio since all the way back in Season 1. He has since starred in 13 films and been in 3 GRA-nominated ensembles but this is his first individual nomination.
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